Kronenburg Castle

After being destroyed by war in the 18th century, the Castle was no longer suitable for habitation by the Counts. From 1817 to 1865, it was used as a prison. Only in 1883 did Prince Alexis II commission the architect Franz Anton Nordhoff to expand the residential tract where the lords of the Castle lived to a proper aristocratic domicile as befit the times.

Kronenburg Castle, as it is today – with representative rooms behind a medieval-looking façade – was built between 1883 and 1914 as part of an extensive building program.

In keeping with tastes during imperial times, recourse was taken to historical building styles. Above all, the Gothic was felt to be the epitome of a “German” building style. The Neo-Gothic style posed a contrast to industrialization; it expressed the longing for a firm estates-based feudal structure.

Today art history refers to this architectural style as Historicism. The dominating section of the Kronenburg is the middle tract with a crow-stepped gable, built above open arcades.